BY ADRIAN SMITH
Review
by Adrian Smith
When
American Andrew Jessel (Tony Randall arrives in Marrakesh on a business trip,
he checks into the hotel and discovers a corpse in his wardrobe. This is the
beginning of a "wrong man" style adventure involving international
espionage and criminal gangs, but thankfully on his side is sexy super-spy Kyra
Stanovy (Senta Berger). The two set off to clear his name and solve the
mystery, and spend large parts of the film having to rescue each other from
assorted dangers, mainly involving local kingpin Casimir (Herbert Lom) and his
psychotic henchman Jonquil (Klaus Kinski). Also thrown into the mix are British
character actors Wilfrid Hyde-White, John Le Mesurier and Terry-Thomas,
providing a combination of plot exposition and comic relief, and the entire
plot builds to an inevitably happy conclusion where wrongs are made right, the
guilty are punished and the innocent get to ride off into the sunset.
Our Man in Marrakesh (known in the
States as Bang! Bang! You're Dead!) is a typical mid-Sixties Harry Alan
Towers production. An independent British producer who had made a name for
himself in radio and television before moving into feature films, he
specialised in European co-productions, pulling in A-list names and finance
from several different countries. His budgets were low, and his scripts were
often second-rate, but he seemed to have a no trouble persuading bankable stars
to take off around the world with him. He always preferred to shoot on
location, and Our Man in Marrakesh is no exception. Aside from some
rear-projection driving shots in a studio, most of the film is shot in
Marrakesh itself, giving it a seedy authenticity which gives puts it on a par
with the Bond films of the time. This film was one of hundreds of Bond-style
films produced during the 1960s. They became known as Eurospy films, although
other countries and continents got in on the act, too. Our Man in Marrakesh
mixes elements of Bond with Hitchcock's thrillers fairly successfully, and Tony
Randall makes a likeable comedic leading man. More fun, however, are the
various characters that rotate around him, most notably Klaus Kinski, who once
again looks unhinged and slightly dangerous. His piercing eyes and ease with
violent outbursts would of course be put to use in better films later on,
particularity in his collaborations with Werner Herzog.
The
Tasmanian director Don Sharp is best known for his Hammer films Rasputin the
Mad Monk (1966), The Kiss of the Vampire (1963) and The
Devil-Ship Pirates (1964), but his cult credentials include films like Curse
of the Fly (1965), two Fu-Manchu films with Christopher Lee (both produced
by Harry Alan Towers) and bizarre zombie-biker thriller Psychomania
(1973), a film that caused such despondency in star George Sanders that he
committed suicide shortly after its release. His direction is uncomplicated and
efficient. Although he rarely displays what could be called creative flair, he
gets the job done, and he was clearly reliable enough to be regularly employed
by producers for whom schedules and budgets were tight.
Our Man in Marrakesh, complete with
James Bond-style marketing materials, is a fun and exciting film with bullets,
car chases, corpses, bikini-clad babes, spies and gangsters, all wrapped up in
an exotic locale. It won't change your life, but it is fun and features more
entertainment value than many other Eurospy movies of the period. This has been
released by Network on R2 DVD as part of their 'The British Film' collection.
This is an exciting five-year plan, launched in 2013 with Studiocanal, to
release over 450 vintage British films. Sadly most of these DVDs have so far
featured very little in the way of extras, with just a theatrical trailer and
an image gallery to accompany the movie. However when films like these have not
been seen in any sort of decent print for decades the DVDs are well worth your time.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW CLIPS AND TRAILER AND TO PURCHASE THIS TITLE.
